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Middle Class Warrior

The poverty threshold for a citizen of the USA is $11,490. This means one person will live on, every year (perhaps adjusting for inflation), $11,490 and they are considered to be living in poverty. There are officially about 39.1 million Americans who are poor (living in poverty). There are likely more who are unaccounted for.

February 11, 2014 was the state dinner hosted for French President Hollande. For this event the First Lady wore a beautiful custom designed dress, worth $12,000. Pause for a moment. This dress is worth more than what many Americans live on for an entire year. Maybe it is perfectly alright to spend that much on a dress for a lavish event while nearly 47 million Americans are on food stamps (costing nearly 72 billion dollars). This is not the only high priced dinner party the president has thrown. CBS news filed a freedom of information act request and this is what they found http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-do-state-dinners-cost-they-aint-cheap/

While throwing fêtes is something that must be done at times, doing so with such grandeur is nearing obscene because of the sheer hypocrisy. On September 22, 2011, Obama made this statement in Cincinnati: “I am a warrior for the middle class.” He has also made various statements about the unfairness of the wealthy and redistribution of wealth: these things should be easy to find, they’re practically a cornerstone of every speech by this time. The point is to tell labourers that he fights for them (and not just fights, but is a warrior), while holding dinners for dignitaries above and beyond what should ever be expected for a nation trillions upon trillions in debt, with 47 million on food stamps, and who are supposed to be fighting the unfair excesses of wealth. People are losing their jobs, their health plans, their savings. People make in an entire year less than the cost of the dress the First Lady wore specifically for one dinner.

A warrior for the middle class? Perhaps a warrior for them to also be put onto food stamps. He is fiddling while the ship goes down. This entire scenario is, as stated above, grotesque for this simple juxtaposition: the citizens of the Soviet Union lived in poverty and had to line up for government sanctioned foods and other goods, while the leaders and officials lived in lavish luxury. Expensive dinner parties, dresses, cars (did we mention the gilded trollies that shuttled the visitors across the White House lawn to the tent where the dinner party was held?), everything they could want, and take, was there as they pleased. The people starved and suffered.

$11,490 poverty line.
$12,000 dress for one dinner.
Does this sound anything like a Warrior For the Middle Class?